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ather the role of local

ather the role of local data publishers and downstream users. They support third parties providing more sophisticated visualisation tools, including those provided for profit, seeing it as a new market based on the Open Data. The Singaporean government’s Open Data portal, data.gov.sg, was cited as a leader in providing simple data visualisations. 64 Visualisations can be a good test of whether an Open Dataset hosted via a portal is usable. Drag-anddrop tools such as DataSeed 65 and DataHero 66 offer instant visualisations of structured data, making it possible to quickly assess whether there are any errors in a dataset. It is worth noting that for an Open Data portal to offer data visualisations, data typically needs to be stored on the portal as structured and machine-readable data. The EDP only stores metadata of the datasets in its local dataset repositories. The data that is attached to a dataset remains on the source portal that is harvested by the EDP. In case of a visualization of that data, the data is accessed in real-time on the source portal. Whereas most portals develop visualisations, these are not necessarily self-contained. For instance, the European Data Portal has developed a graphical data visualisation based on the D3.js JavaScript libraries to visualize (statistical) data in Visualisation tables and graphical charts. The visualisations are therefore developed as an additional module linked to the CKAN library where the metadata is stored. One example is the UK’s national crime mapping website, police.uk, which is built on top of the data.police.uk API. By keeping police.uk’s mapping (visualisation) website separate to its actual data source (the data.police.uk portal), the interface demonstrates how the data source can be re-used. It also serves different user needs (both citizens and developers). 64 Singapore Open Data portal 65 Dataseed 66 Datahero 44

6. Operations In the case of an Open Data portal, the service being operated can go beyond the technical infrastructure underpinning the portal – such as its servers – to the practices and procedures that ensure it provides access to useful, high-quality, discoverable Open Data. Because of the nature of the service an Open Data portal provides, Open Data portal owners are often required to be more open, transparent and adaptive to end-user requests than may be expected of other services. This brings its own challenges to the sustainable operation of an Open Data portal. The operations of a sustainable Open Data portal involve a portal owner running it day to day, ensuring that it continues to be responsive and useful for portal users. The extent of an Open Data portal’s operations is shaped by its finance model (as discussed in the Financing section). For an Open Data portal, users include: end-users, who look for data on the portal, and may come from inside or outside government publishers, who publish or register data on the portal – these may include other owners from whom data is syndicated or publishers outside government monitors (either internal and external), who assess the openness of governments by the volume and quality of data on the platform, and by their responsiveness to feedback The majority of portal owners that we spoke to were not themselves publishers of the data provided through the portal. In most cases, portal owners said they only published metadata while the data itself was stored by the publishers (typically government agencies or regional governments). Local portal owners that we spoke to typically published data themselves to the national portal, effectively taking on separate roles on different portals. Main recommendations to make a portal operation more sustainable: Manage publication operations to support different types of publishers from small- to largescale, enabling automation where possible Manage technical operations to include effective monitoring and reporting systems for inaccessible data, preferably through publicly accessible lists for users to track progress On-board new end-users, publishers and monitors with effective User Experience design, clear publication processes, feedback loops and training Automate functions to ensure seamless integration of a diversity of data sources, increase user friendliness and limit overheads for stakeholders Capture and share lessons learned, and be open to best practices and standards developed by other portal operators 45